Biden Clemencies Include Imprisoned Native American Activist, “Kids for Cash” Judge
Before leaving office on January 20, 2025, outgoing Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) issued a raft of clemency orders—including a sentence commutation for a Native American activist who was considered a political prisoner by Amnesty International and another for a disgraced former Pennsylvania judge convicted of locking up “kids for cash.”
That same day, incoming Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) issued pardons to nearly 1,500 of his supporters convicted for their roles in an insurrection at the United States Capitol in January 2021, after Trump lost the last election to Biden. Together, with an earlier round of Biden clemencies, that meant more than 3,000 prisoners were granted relief in just over a month.
On December 12, 2024, Biden pardoned 1,500 federal prisoners who had been released to home confinement. Among them was Michael Conahan, 74, one of two former Pennsylvania judges convicted in 2010 and 2011 of taking $2.8 million in kickbacks from the operators of a private juvenile lockup where he and fellow judge Mark Ciavarella sentenced kids as young as eight years old. Conahan and Ciavarella, 74, were ordered in 2022 to pay $206.3 million in damages to hundreds of victims, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Feb. 2023, p.57.]
Biden nearly emptied death row of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on December 23, 2024. He commuted the sentences of 37 condemned prisoners to life without the possibility of parole, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Jan. 2025, p.16.] Next, on January 17, 2025, the President also commuted the sentences of another 2,500 non-violent drug offenders, saying they were excessively long.
Biden issued a commutation to Leonard Peltier, 80, who was convicted of fatally shooting two FBI agents in 1975 on a South Dakota reservation that he and some 30 other natives had briefly taken over two years earlier. Peltier, who maintained his innocence for 50 years, was the only one convicted in the killings, and evidence that acquitted two others charged with him was excluded from his trial.
Before Trump took over the Oval Office three days later, Biden also issued preemptive pardons to three of his siblings and two of their spouses, citing concerns that they would be targeted for prosecution by the Trump administration. An earlier Biden pardon went to his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted on federal tax and weapons charges; the President cited fears about reprisals from Trump officials should the younger Biden report to BOP custody.
With those actions, Biden brought the number of clemencies that he issued to 8,062, vastly more than the 237 Trump issued in his first term. But then Trump used the first hours of his second administration to make good on a campaign promise to pardon some 1,500 supporters convicted of storming the Capitol after his loss four years earlier. Sentences of another 39 were commuted. Waving a white flag, the Department of Justice dropped the prosecution of around 300 pending cases connected to the insurrection.
Sources: CBC News, NBC News, Politico, Reason
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